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Fried Chicken

Fried chicken with a simple gravy made from flour, water, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Fried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Thoroughly wash the chicken and place it in a crock to drain.

  2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

  3. Heat lard in a skillet until very hot.

  4. Dredge the chicken in flour until completely covered.

Cook and make gravy

  1. Place the chicken in the hot skillet, cover, and reduce heat to prevent fast frying.

  2. Turn the chicken to brown evenly on all sides, cooking for about 1 hour.

  3. Once cooked, remove the chicken to a hot platter.

  4. For gravy, stir 2 tablespoons of flour into the hot fat until smooth.

  5. Add 1 pint of cold water and a little salt, stirring until it boils.

  6. Serve the gravy in a bowl.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked through by slow, covered frying in fat.
Flour
Dredging coat that browns in the hot fat and forms a crisp crust on the chicken.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat and gives the chicken its browned, crisp surface.
Water
Mixed with flour and fat to make a thin gravy that thickens as it boils.

The step that matters

Reduce the heat after placing the chicken in the skillet. Very hot fat browns the coating before the thick meat cooks through, so lowering the heat and covering the pan lets the inside cook gently while the outside stays golden rather than burning.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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